Lord and Miller INSPIRE at DNEG Animation!

The Academy Award-winning filmmakers joined us to talk passion, craft, and their latest project

We were thrilled to welcome Phil Lord and Chris Miller (the Academy Award-winning creative duo behind Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, The Lego Movie, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and many others) to our London studio last week for the first in our new INSPIRE series for DNEG Animation, in which we host inspiring speakers to share their knowledge and experience with our global animation crew!

During the event, which was hosted by our very own David Prescott, Lord and Miller talked about their passion for the craft of animation and the story behind their latest production The Mitchells vs The Machines, which premiered in April and has gone on to become Netflix’s biggest animated film to date.

 

And as if having Lord and Miller drop into our studio for a chat wasn’t enough, we were also joined by writer and director Mike Rianda, live on Zoom from LA, who told us all about the roots of the film’s inspiration – his own delightfully crazy family – and a childhood infatuation with robots!

 

Mike has worked at Pixar Animation Studios and JibJab, taught at CalArts, and served as a writer and creative director for the Annie Award-winning TV show Gravity Falls at Disney Television Animation, so we couldn’t have been prouder to hear his insights. One particular highlight that will stay with us was Mike showing us the actual ‘Rick Mitchell jacket’ – the real-life one that was worn by his own father, on whom the character was based.

 

The Mitchells vs The Machines tells the story of an old-school father and his plugged-in filmmaker daughter who struggle to relate as their family begins a road-trip to her new college, only to be interrupted by a machine-driven apocalypse.

 

It was an amazing talk that brought our DNEG Animation crew together around the passion and skill that went into shaping this wonderful story – and brought us together in a literal sense, as we were joined on Zoom by crew from across our locations in London, Montreal, Vancouver, LA, and Mumbai.

A huge thank you to everyone who made this first event in our INSPIRE series such a special event for DNEG Animation. Now, who can we invite to speak at the next one…

London

Vancouver

Mumbai

Los Angeles

Chennai

Montréal

Mohali

Bangalore

Toronto

Sydney